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The cult of personality around Obama didn't hold a candle to Trump's. Obama was regularly attacked from both the left and right within his own party. You could be a Democrat in good standing and also an Obama critic. Meanwhile, in Trump's GOP absolute fealty is the bare minimum. Criticism, where it exists, is either of the 50 Stalins variety or carefully suggesting that perhaps the Tsar is being poorly advised.
What you say here is directly opposite to what I've observed in my own life throughout both presidencies. Trump faces significant more pushback than Obama ever did. I'm unsure how to reconcile this -- one of us is simply wrong in our understanding of reality, there's no other way around it. And I don't think it's me.
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Thrills up the leg? The Light Worker? The oceans stopped rising?
Granted, all that was his first term, the gloss had worn off by the time the second one came around.
The God-Emperor stuff was both funny and a satire by someone not a fan of Trump, it was taken up ironically because hell, yeah it was funny and cool at the same time.
Not to mention having the instincts that let him react like this in the immediate wake of the assassination attempt, leading to what you have to admit is an iconic image.
...one of your examples of a cult of personality around Obama is a misphrased version of his own speech?
He's exhorting the troops ('if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it'), and he's not even saying that the oceans stopped rising but that the rise begins to slow.
Meanwhile, a considerable share of American Protestants believe(d) that Trump is anointed by God to be the President, and the share is not insignificant even if there's a comparison question regarding whether all Presidents are anointed by God.
I'm not sure what the satire part is in reference to. Probably the first memes I saw about Trump (his campaign didn't instantly take off in the online crowd so it ook a bit of time for them to start accumulating in places where I'd spot them) were God-Emperor memes, presented in a ha-ha-only-serious tone.
I think if, in your very own acceptance speech, you are already writing your place in the history books of tomorrow about future generations recognising the great job you did, that counts as "establishing a cult of personality".
I think a cult of personality is when a statesman is treated not merely as a statesman who did a great job, but an exceptional, well, personality. It's when sycophants say "Stalin raised this country from its knees (and no one else could)", not "we raised this country from its knees under Stalin (he was a great help)".
And this applies to both Obama and Trump, although Obama played more in keeping with the mos maiorum and Trump is just straightup the great MAGA king.
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Not even close. If the argument was merely "some people really like Trump" vs "some people really liked Obama", sure, but it's not. It is that you cannot criticize Trump and be a member of the GOP in good standing. Musk tried and very rapidly learned that if you tried to break ranks you were going to be whipped into line.
There's no Obama equivalent to cabinet secretaries beginning meetings by verbally fellating Trump. The degree of personal devotion demand and received by Trump from his followers is pretty much without parallel.
If you mean literal GEoM memes, perhaps yes. If you mean artwork where Trump is portrayed as a heroic and/or borderline deific figure (often in comical contrast to his actual appearance), no. Maybe it was started by some internet troll, but his base picked it up and ran with it.
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Where was there criticism of Obama from Democrats that was not of the 50 Stalins variety?
From the right of the party and from the left of the party. (Of course Sanders is technically not a Democrat, but in practice, he was and is.)
Manchin is actually quoted as saying he's doing this "not as a Democrat", and I think this counts as saying that the Tsar is poorly advised:
Sanders is claiming that Obama isn't left wing enough, which is a 50 Stalins criticism. And it's not actually hard to find conservatives criticizing Trump.
This is very silly. On this basis it is impossible for a left-winger to give anything but 50 Stalins criticism to those on the centre-left. Obviously Sanders will claim Obama isn't left-wing enough, because he's... to his left.
Scott originally gave as an example "There isn’t enough Stalinism in this country!" There isn't enough leftism is an obvious extension.
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So? He's still a Democrat.
That's not what 50 Stalins means. As it was originally used, it was "Okay, back up. Suppose you went back to Stalinist Russia and you said “You know, people just don’t respect Comrade Stalin enough. There isn’t enough Stalinism in this country! I say we need two Stalins! No, fifty Stalins!”"
It's supposed to be a completely facile pseudocriticism, not an actual criticism that is simply coming from a different direction than where you yourself are coming from. If we loop back to actual Stalin, it was just as dangerous to attack him from the left (like Trotsky did) as from the right (like Bukharin did), originally even considerably moreso. The only way to stay say would have been not to attack Stalin at all but "attack the system" while praising Stalin, like the 50 Stalins example guy does.
This is someone obscure enough that I have never heard of them before you linked this, and the whole piece starts with him taling about how his criticisms of Trump get him constantly attacked by dozens of readers. Not a particularly worthy example, this.
Not a normal and mainstream one. He was a well known and prominent 'blue dogger', which exempts him from the usual rules around democrats. It could mean many things but 'moderate republican who steals more' is a reasonable and common formulation.
Can you show non-blue dog democrats criticizing Obama without careful phrasing?
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I understand a 50 Stalins criticism to be that someone's positions aren't extreme enough and he should lean into them even more. Claiming that a Democrat is not left-wing enough would be a 50 Stalins criticism. (And likewise, something like "Trump isn't doing enough to stop illegal immigration" would be a 50 Stalins criticism of Trump.)
It's true that it would be dangerous to do this to actual Stalin, but that's not how the metaphor works.
It was the first one I found by googling that sounded good enough.
If that were true then Stalin would be a desperately confusing example to use for the reasons @Stefferi points out.
Fine but the two are obviously not equivalent. Manchin was a sitting Senator and former state governor. 'Dace Potas' is a journalist who is two years out of college whose various bios tout him as a writer for such pillars of journalism as USA Today and something called 'The College Fix'.
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To name a few:
Among other things, it bears pointing out that there was no republican support for ACA, and no republican support was expected. The final version was a compromise between mainstream democrats and blue doggers, not between republicans and democrats.
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